About a year ago, Rachel Held Evans wrote “The scandal of the evangelical heart.” She talked about how the tight theological arguments that exalt the genocide and violence of the Bible almost “scared her out of the Church.”
Richard Beck calls this “orthodox alexithymia”. We completely uncouple our emotions from our theology. We expect ourselves to be robots, perfectly programmed to have rigorous, rational explanations for God, without falling prey to our flawed emotions.
I find this reasoning in the church all the time. In Cru, I was taught that the faith train doesn’t need the feelings caboose to chug chug chug along. In Anne Graham Lotz’s Magnificent Obsession, she says God is teaching her “to live by faith, not by my feelings.”
I think this disorder reaches its tentacles not just into theology but into our spiritual practices.
We compare spiritual practices to exercise or dieting*, and assume that more discipline will equal more connection to Jesus.
In Rick Warren’s Bible Study methods, he lists “laziness” as one of the top three reasons why people don’t read the Bible.
And Frank Viola, whose writing has been transformative to me, sent out a newsletter recently that explains that we need to trust the Lord, and make a conscious decision to swim against the tide of culture. “When we move against the current, we spend time with the Lord and His Word, we make healthy eating choices, we take time to exercise…”
It’s right there that I get all anxious, ashamed and jittery.
Because I am great at the disciplines of eating right, exercising, and applying myself. I am fantastic at those things.
It’s when I use that discipline to “spend time with the Lord and his Word” that things go haywire.
My great self-discipline has nearly killed my faith, a couple times over.
Look, I am sure that some people do need more discipline when it comes to spiritual practices or seeking out Christ. My objection is that Christians seem to think that’s the answer for everyone.
It’s not.
For some of us, more discipline is the worst idea ever.
Our problem is not that we are lazy, or that we need to get motivated. The problem is that we are broken. We are abused. We are mourning. We are afraid.
Without acknowledging our deep hurt, we will always struggle to connect to God. More discipline will only increase our shame and anxiety.
We do injury to ourselves when we gloss over those dark feelings. Jesus came to heal us, not to anesthetize us.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism says we are called to enjoy God forever. His glory is “the human person fully alive,” as St. Irenaus said.
Enjoyment doesn’t happen if we are numb. We are not fully alive if we do not acknowledge our feelings.
And numbness is rampant in our culture. It is positively epidemic in the church.
I just can’t bear hearing connection to God compared to doing pushups any more. Working harder at faith does not help me find God, and I have a suspicion that’s true for a lot of other people, too.
Way too many people I know have been in churches that were rigid, legalistic or even spiritually abusive. Sexual abuse in church happens over and over. More often then not, it is aded poorly, if it is aded at all.
There are a lot of walking wounded Christians out there.
Look, I get it: we’re afraid what will happen if we all start neglecting God. There is beauty in showing up, over and over, even when you aren’t feeling on fire. There is room for perseverance and faithfulness in meeting God.
Just like discipline has nearly killed my faith, faithful spiritual practices have saved it.
But if you’ve tried and tried, and failed and failed, stop. Rest in your failure, and try something different.
Listen to your heart. Pay attention. Notice what you’re feeling. And imagine how you would meet with God if you were hungry, if you were fully alive, if He promised to let you enjoy Him, forever.
Image credit: Susana Fernandez
*Honestly, I don’t think this approach does us any favors with a health, body image, and eating, either.
I understand bot takes: God does ask us to obey in faith and not feeling. And that is hard. But love does hard things. The church does fail to address deep wounds but Jesus never did. He knows them , and overcame them. Healing can’t begin until acknowledgement does
The other side of that coin is our culture living only on feeling, giving in to sin because they just don’t feel in love with what God wants
For them or asks of them. Our feelings are indicators but we should not allow them to be our dictators
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“Our feelings are indicators but we should not allow them to be our dictators.” I absolutely agree with you–this is a great way to put what I was getting at when I said that I think we should treat our feelings like beloved children: unruly, in need of guidance and mentoring and discipline, but also capable of speaking truth uncomfortably when adults are all pretending.
A lot of people characterize our culture as letting feelings (lust, anger, hostility, greed) run amok, but I would say a lot of the problems in our culture come from trying to escape our feelings, not feel them. People are addicts not because they feel too much, but because they’re trying to numb themselves. God created our feelings, made them part of us. I think they are a big part of healthy spirituality.
But yes, this is complicated 🙂 How we obey and do the hard thing in love is a mystery. I’m grateful that the more I heal, the more I desire to obey, even when it’s scary.
This is so great, Heather. I appreciate the push to let Jesus in to our hearts–which means the hard work we have to do is staying vulnerable to Him and listening well and trusting Him more than ourselves.
Thanks, Jennifer. Amen: being absolutely, blessedly, humbly vulnerable. Maybe for me, at least, feeling my feelings is such an act of humility that it opens me up to him 🙂
Actually, I think the ‘disciplined’ approach to faith is not just unhelpful, it’s toxic! It produces shame and guilt, and little else. We will never measure up to the expectations of what we *should* be doing – whether those expectations are from others or ourselves.
It also makes God into some sort of chore. How many of us would enjoy knowing that our spouse or our friend spends time with us only out of discipline? Personally, I’d be devastated if that was the case.
FWIW, I have found that the more I let go and simply relaxed into God’s ever-presence, the more I enjoyed him, and the greater my awareness of him in everything I do.
I’m a little torn, but I can definitely understand where you get the word “toxic”. I say” torn” because I do see -some- kind of discipline in my spiritual practices. I think of the kind of discipline necessary like the kind people use in meditation–to sit still long enough to focus on God. It’s not really what I -want- to do in my monkey mind, but something deeper down longs for it. It’s like when I go out swing dancing, and the song isn’t over, and I’m tired, but I want to stick with the dance, because it’s a thing of beauty, and it deserves completeness. Or when I keep writing even when it’s tough. The faithfulness to show up even when you don’t exactly feel like it. Because of seeking beauty–not because it’s “good”. But it’s a slower, quieter, quirkier discipline, and requires listening to your creative mind, and being still, and being bold more often than doing what’s expected of you.
“…it’s a slower, quieter, quirkier discipline, and requires listening to your creative mind, and being still, and being bold more often than doing what’s expected of you.”
Hey Heather, I see where you would feel torn, because I was just seeing the “what’s expected of you” type of discipline. You’re not only seeing a whole other facet of discipline, but you’re distinguishing the motivation behind it.
Seeing discipline as something that comes from within, which pursues beauty and completeness is something I can definitely celebrate 🙂
Oh, good. I think the church rarely talks about this kind of discipline, and fixates on the other kind. So yes, that is definitely toxic.
Thanks for the kind words. That other kind of discipline is much harder to pin down, much harder to teach (because it varies so much from person to person) and so much easier to live out. I hope we all (myself included) can step into it, though. What freedom.